"Wait... Is This Play About Us?" And Other AI Depictions

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

TW: mentions of death.

Happy New Year! I hope your 2023 has been somewhat exciting, with maybe a tiny pinch of some much-needed chaos; mine already was evidently touched and turned upside down by the touchingly sweet, sci-fi horror-comedy hour that is M3gan (2023, dir. Gerard Johnstone). In January, I usually expect to see the bottom barrel of the upcoming year's worst movies and I'm so glad I went into M3gan with such low expectations (which truthfully, I shouldn't have. If I had done my research correctly, I would have seen that screenwriter Akela Cooper, aka the creator of the masterpiece that is Malignant, was in charge of the script... let's just say that I would have known I was in good hands.) because my doubts indeed needed to be swallowed; I've never laughed so hard in the theater! The campy and kooky humor that is so enmeshed within the goopy, stretchy robot skin of M3gan, along with the real-life actress (Allison Williams) furthering our voyage into the uncanny valley with some really unsettling dance moves, physically caused me to wheeze with non-theater appropriate laughter; especially, the random singing. When M3gan broke out in Titanium, I was deceased. Snickering beyond the grave.

Cooper's writing, or rather the balance she infuses between scenes of both serious sentimentality and playful scares, usually explores who or who can claim humanity. Who is monsterized, and is it truly an act of "justice" once we strip their humanity away? Or rather, once we realize that both Gabriel and M3gan do not exist to just be subservient fill-ins for negligent caregivers or mere physical depictions of our more violent and subconscious desires, is it the responsibility of the "creator" or "host" to pull the plug without processing the accountability needed to rectify with their internal and emotionally-avoidant projections? Literally punishing M3gan for doing what she was programmed to do or Gabriel, who's trying to survive the same abandonment and abusive facility just as much as his twin, Emily. Continuously, Copper's writing pushes us into a complicated corner that asks us what seems on the surface to be impossible, but actually is not: Can we, as a society, empathize with labeled "monsters" whose stories are situated next to their mistakes or pursuits to stay alive?

After watching M3gan, I started reflecting on a conversation I had with a relative over the winter break. He admitted to me that he found Uma Thurman in Kill Bill utterly terrifying - "What?!" I laughed. It seemed absurd to me that he, someone who claims to watch some of the goriest anime out there, would be afraid of a woman, seeking out her revenge. "Oh sure," he said. "I'm afraid of all of those," he continued. "All of those?" I asked, confused. He went on to listing Ex Machina, Beneath the Skin, and so on. Quietly, I listened for a while, perplexed by his association with Ex Machina and Beneath the Skin, both movies playing on the vagueness of two creations and how they both border upon being so AI that they appear alien, to a movie like Kill Bill, a story undoubtedly places a "real" human in the center. It dawned on me that perhaps this relative would have also found M3gan terrifying in the same way, not just because all four of these movies challenge the false fabrication that is white femininity, an idea bolstered by white supremacy in order to sustain the myth of "innocence" in order to criminalize and dehumanize BIPOC, but also because they reveal an inventible backlash, bubbling beneath the surface of some of the most under-served people in society. That "objects", similar to M3gan, can have a threshold for tolerance reached and rectified by their own hands. That really it's a fear of revolution and oddly enough, he evidently places himself with the capitalists and their assets, regardless of how distant we all are from being considered wealthy.

I think it's important to say that when exploring AI and robotic narratives, that a lot of other metaphors, explorations, and cultural lenses can be placed and tended to within the framework of the same story and it would still work. When I talk about how AI resembles autistic people in interpersonal relationships with neurotypical standards, please know that I don't mean that as the final and concrete interpretation that I believe everyone should adhere to. I have always done my writing on the opposite side of universal statements and deliberately only tie my own, personal experiences to my play. This blog, right here, is merely an inch of the scratch on the surface of this ever-expanding topic that I hope others (and I am by no means the first person to connect AI revolts to bigger, cultural reflections) will continue it on in the future.

Fawning is a term that can be seen in a specific context of autistic pursuits, who search for a way to not only flatter someone who they perceive to have social power over them but to also avoid conflict through people-pleasing tendencies. In a lot of my own rumination episodes, I had a lot of the times compared myself to a responsive AI, much like M3gan, and a lot of the other examples listed above. For example, when M3gan is expected to "pair" with a single child, thus gaining all of her important information and emotional states, while narrowing down that knowledge as foundational for operation and nothing more, I in a lot of ways, experienced friendship with similar expectations. Not necessarily run by code, separate from my own hands, but rather training the people around me to only value me at my martyrdom. Even at times, resenting them for eventually falling into "the trap" I curated specifically for them. This is not necessarily saying that every disrespect I've encountered is somewhat my fault, but I think eventually, when you insist that your problems, wants, and existence are unimportant to the relationship database, then of course, people start to believe you, and act accordingly. Causing your participation to Animorph from a considerate, good-listening friend to a human-less Alexia. An AI whose life revolves around someone else's wants. Who when talking of self, is seen as expressing a "glitch" in the matrix and is in need of being socially tended to with cues of disgust, dislike, or eventual distance.

I think in all the ways I relate to someone like M3gan, I'm not necessarily sure that she represents a lot of insecure, autistic pursuits, but rather, much like the relative I spoke of above, neurotypical's perception of us when we finally do "snap". I've had real people, who've known me for decades, witness me express the truthful extent of my anger (in a non-violent and a non-abusive manner) once, and immediately compare me to either their past abusers, claim that they didn't know this was "the real me", and tell me that they will never trust me again. Confused, I would take these statements seriously and start internalizing the idea that it is unsafe to express my anger and that I can cause serious harm to the people I love by bringing up my hurt feelings. After long months, even years of reflection, I would try to resolve the issue once again and showcase how much I've "changed" in hopes of my own needs finally being addressed; Ironically, they would downplay the whole event, including the once "uncontrollable" rage they claimed I had, and on top of that being seen as "a grudge holder" for bringing up past squabbles at all. Furious, I would shut down. Feeling hopeless in the process of equalizing myself, I would need space to not only regulate my emotions but to reprioritize and strategize around the issues of the relationship; would I like this process to be a collaborative effort from both parties? Absolutely. Yet, the social ills of the friendship seem to land on my lap the more honest I am with my autism and how it affects my behavior, regardless of that conflict requires two bodies. Like M3gan, I've had some friendships where I'm expected to stabilize my own computing system in not the name of bettering the relationship but to keep it stagnant, in ways that clearly don't benefit the both of us. Serving only one.

This year, I'm committed to not enabling my own dis-fantasy and continuing on this story of placing myself as a technological product, searching to be consumed by someone who would sometimes merely consider my complexity, once in and while. Also... Go see M3gan! I can not believe how high the bar for horror is going to be for the rest of 2023. It's seriously fantastic.